Concord, Virginia: A Southern Town in Stories

Remaining Performances:
Jul 23rd, 7:30 pm
Jul 24th, 6 pm
Jul 25th, 6:30 pm
Jul 26th, 1 pm

They say: “Neofotis performs stories from his prize-winning book, newly published by St. Martin’s Press. With tales of night-swimming lovers, moon-shining old ladies, and gay trials, come witness the 28 year-old love child of Truman Capote and Eudora Welty! (NYC’s Next Magazine)”

Brian’s take: I’ll not mince words: Concord, Virginia, has too many words.

When I’m writing prose, I read my sentences aloud so that I can hear all the over-wrought language I need to banish from the pages. Here, as Peter Neofotis performs aloud two short stories about a small Virginia town, I couldn’t help but wish he’d taken a machete to his manuscript, pruning what are otherwise perfectly compelling stories of thorny phrases like, “She wistfully walked by,” “Helen pointedly replied,” and, thorniest of all, “They ambulated out the door.”

But the biggest problem with Concord, Virginia isn’t the amount of words, but rather its too-heavy reliance upon them instead of character. That’s not to say the characters aren’t periodically attention-grabbing, or even at points well-drawn; but generally, it was a challenge to tell them apart. Not until halfway through the first story did I know for sure which of several college students was testifying before the jury in a case of frat house sodomy. Neofotis’ ability to inhabit multiple distinct characters — already no simple task — is muddied by the energy he has to expend trudging through the narrative as artfully as possible. His characters would be fuller if each had his own relationship with language, his own truly distinct style of speech, and also his own desires for silence. A silence in the theater has huge potential to thrill and enchant. Unfortunately, Neofotis is simply doesn’t leave enough unsaid.

See it if: You don’t mind it when prose turns purple.

Skip it if: My review is already too many words for you to bear.

Not Your Granny’s Revolution

Remaining Performances: Wednesday, July 22 at 6:15 pm.  Thursday, July 23 at 8:00 pm.

They Say: A storytelling play created by Laura Zam (“A name to know”-The Washington Post) and ensemble cast.  What does it mean to be a woman in today’s world?  Five females find revolution in a Paris tryst, a royal beheading, and fighting AIDS.

Ann’s Take: Long ago when I was in college, my good friend began embracing the term “chick” as an appropriate way to describe a new generation of feminism.  I think “chick” is a rather brilliant signifier, describing female-specific content that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Plus, this coinage reclaims the word from its more demeaning form (an activity socio-political-activist-types adore).   So, at the risk of scaring off male audience members and pissing off old-guard feminists, I’ve decided Not Your Granny’s Revolution is a chick show—that is, a show about chicks who have moved past the sensitive diatribes and onto the self-aware humor of personal discovery.

The show features seven vignettes by five female writers/performers, all participants in Laura Zam’s local solo performance lab.  (Zam, though, does not appear in the show; nor do her stories.)  While each performer’s technical ability varies and some pieces are reminiscent of a college Women’s Studies open mic, the content is captivating.  A common theme of female self-reliance holds the pieces together, but beyond that the stories are wildly different – engagement stories, activist stories, childhood stories.  No piece grows stale.  No piece is self-indulgent.  And yes, even men will find them funny.

See it if: You like good stories told by witty women.

Skip it if: You think the theater has enough female voices now that Eve Ensler gave us The Vagina Monologues.

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 18th, 11:30p.m.
Sunday, July 19th, 6:00p.m.
Saturday, July 25th, 9:00p.m.
Sunday, July 26th, 3:00p.m.

They say: Winner of the presitigious Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Ed Hamell combines storytelling, comedy and songs into a brilliantly outrageous theatrical event covering the Beatles, odd jobs, his son’s birth and the shocking death of his parents.

Brett’s take: Phew. Wow. Okay: When, at the end of the show, Mr. Hamell says, “It ain’t for everybody,” he ain’t kidding. It was for me; I think it should be for you; but there is definitely a demographic or two for whom this ain’t. Political conservatives are one. Neat-clean-PC liberals are another.

“But wait,” you say; “then who’s left?” My friends, in this day and age we can sometimes forget there are more than just those two groups. Hamell is a representative of an oft-forgot type: the vulgar, in-yer-face, sex, drugs, rock n’ roll liberal. An original glam rocker from the early 70’s, Hamell has not yuppie-ized or lost his edge whatsoever. He looks and dresses like a snazzy jazz man, or a Beatnik, or your cool uncle who can drop references to the Lovin’ Spoonful as quickly as to Wilco. He plays one heckuva mean amped-to-11, beat-up ‘37 Gibson acoustic punkabilly guitar and sings and talks in an unexpectedly high-pitched, fluid voice which somehow makes him seem much more honest than if he sported the gravelly thirty-years-of-booze voice you might expect.

There’s little plot: Hamell races back and forth like a jackrabbit on speed from tongue-twisting observational spoken blues song to racy jokes to unapologetic politicking to surprisingly honest confessions. Although Hamell has a script, he constantly deviates from it, even cutting himself off mid-song to tell us something he was just reminded of; invariably, his extemporaneous aside is hilarious or insightful or both. He informs us that Martin Scorsese is more rock n’ roll than Maroon 5. He sings a song about his love for part of the female anatomy, in which the chorus sounds like a play for the attention of a cat. He lets us know the show was originally based largely on anti-Bush diatribes (which is why the title no longer has much signficance), but now that the Presidency’s changed hands we’ll have to do with a dirty-yet-somehow-flattering Michelle Obama joke. He cuts immediately from his most hilariously off-color song to a blunt and shocking account (and it truly is) of the death of his parents—before going into a second song that almost celebrates it.

How often do you get the chance to absorb the wisdom of a guy who’s seen it all (crack bars, John Lennon, a happy marriage and parenthood) and still retained both his anarchistic political convictions and his raunchy sense of humor? Judging by the award he received from the extremly picky Edinburgh Fringe—not so often indeed.

See it if: You need to get yourself shocked, thought-provoked, enlightened, entertained, challenged, or tickled pink. Or  you’d like to shout “Fuck it!” in chorus with an audience full of young and old.

Skip it if: When Hamell says, “I know my demographic,” he’s not talking about you—i.e., you can’t deal your sensibilities towards Bush, euthanasia, feminism, casual drug use, Obama or music being offended.

Remaining Performances:
July 18, 9:30 p.m.; July 19, 1 p.m.

They say: “Jamaica. Revolution. Visa. Impossible. CIA. Seduction. Desperation. A dream. Heartbreak. Handsome. American. Customs. Million dollars. Duffel bag. Machetes. Goats. Prostitutes. Bullets. Adrenaline. Kerosene. Run for your life. Based on a true story.”

Annie’s take: No doubt you have at least a couple of friends, relatives, etc. who are known for their proclivity for extensive and often exhaustive storytelling. Whether these stories sprout up during your dinner conversation, your lunch break or your experience of that third dirty martini, they hold the potential to lull you to the brink of unconsciousness or inject you with a hearty dose of insight into the human condition. You can almost smell an “extensive and exhaustive” story from its opening words: take, for example, “Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus,” or, if it’s been a while since high school Lit, “This one time, at band camp…” Whether the yarn-spinner be Homer or American Pie’s red-haired hussy-in-disguise, there exists a dangerously fine line between compelling and mind-numbing storytelling.

That being said, signing on for an 85-minute one-woman show presents the ticket-holder with a doubt or two. I’ll confess that I had my reservations. However, may it be known that Jamaica Farewell, Debra Ehrhardt’s narrative about her immigration from Manley-era Jamaica to promise-holding America, is a story worth sitting through. From the get-go, there is no uncertainty as to how the story will end: it begins in a Starbucks, which, in a journey-to-America story, signifies success as clearly as the Statue of Liberty. Like any story whose outcome is already known, it is the middle that counts. In Jamaica Farewell, the degree to which Ehrhardt fantasizes about life in America works as the comic frame and, as such, maintains the freshness of each bump along the road.

If the show has an Achilles heel, it is the possibility that its central character, an optimistic immigrant, might feel worn-out. However, Ehrhardt manages to survive that threat. Zipping across the bare stage in a pink shirt and jeans, she secures the audience’s affection with her Jamaican accent, astute physical comedy and rapid-fire jokes that manage at once to poke fun at and profess love for her home country.

Tales of immigration, and certainly those that clock in at over an hour, can rightly be termed “extensive and exhaustive.” Yet, like the bards of yore, Debra Ehrhardt possesses a rare ability to mesmerize that would have kept ancient Grecians sitting around the fire for hours.

See it if: Your facial muscles are supple enough to smile continually for 85 minutes.

Skip it if: The fact that you left your Adderall at home might present a problem.

Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 26 @ 4 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 8 PM

They say: “Master storyteller Mike Daisey’s new comic monologue takes aim at the history of the Department of Homeland Security. Combining eye-opening research and witty autobiography, he bores into the dark heart of America to discover the meaning of security and the price we are willing to pay for it.”

Brian’s take: Got some free time this weekend? Oooh, I’ve got an idea–you should pay $20 to let a man sit at a table and talk to you for two hours about the history of American security!

You might think I’m being sarcastic (two hours of a man sitting at a table, you say?), but I shit you not. That is actually what you should do, as long as the man’s name is Mike Daisey, the creator and comic purveyor of the exquisitely conceived If You See Something Say Something. I’ll leave the sarcasm up to him.

There may be no metaphor in security, as Daisey astutely notes, but he certainly injects metaphor (and simile, and irony, and synecdoche, and peripetea, &c, &c) aplenty into this series of monologues–stories, really–which he weaves with enthralling dexterity of voice, tone, gesture, and expression.  The show is billed as the story of the Department of Homeland Security, but much of the focus is on the history of the atomic bomb.  The piece is obsessively researched, and by interlacing the straight history with his own anecdotes and observations, Daisey is able to infuse a somewhat sterile topic with a folksy, around-the-campfire sensibility.  In some of the most disturbing but memorable moments, Daisey is even able to turn the monologue into something of a ghost story–one minute you’re laughing at the foibles of Bernard Kerik, the next minute Daisey is describing in unsettling detail what would happen if Cohen’s neutron bomb were detonated above the theater, and you feel just a bit sick for joking around only moments earlier.  

Daisey is one of those people (I’ve seen him before) who can make anything scintillating, so even if you proclaim to be uninterested in neutrons and bombs and the Cold War and deserts and Tom Ridge and that kind of thing, go if only to spend some quality time with Daisey.  It’s like taking one of your favorite nonfiction authors–I’ll use Ian Frazier but you can fill-in-the-blank–crossing him with your favorite stand-up comedian–let’s say, oh, I don’t know, Robin Williams–and hunkering down in a bar for a few hours to discuss a subject about which he’s read every book possible.

See it if: You’ve ever been frisked ever-so-scandalously by a security guard.

Skip it if: You are overly paranoid about getting radiation poisoning.

For Tomorrow: Story & Poetry of Hilda Stern Cohen
Goethe-Institut- Gallery

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 13 @ 5 pm
Wednesday, July 16 @ 7pm

They say: “Theatre, storytelling, music, and prayer come together in this uniquely moving program portraying the life and poetry of German-born Holocaust survivor Hilda Stern Cohen. Performed by storyteller Gail Rosen, based on her interviews with Cohen, and singer and Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton. Recently performed in Poland, Austria, Germany and Israel.”

Sheffy says: Maybe it was the Holocaust theme that attracted a slightly older than average Fringe audience, but Fringe is blessed to be the home for such a powerful show. Storyteller Gail Rosen did not choose this topic, it was Hilda Stern Cohen that chose Gail to make sure her story got told. Gail takes that charge seriously in a project that’s been 13 years in the making and will be released this fall on DVD.

It bears witness to the story of a human life—one in which humanity itself was challenged, but prevailed. The lights in the house are left on, allowing the audience to share their collective reactions (but I also had to fight the urge to interrupt with questions, since it felt like a classroom). As people around me were moved to tears, I heard them unconsciously joining in the prayers as they were chanted on stage.

Gail’s performance is flawless, but almost unnoticed, for it is Hilda’s voice that transports us to Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz. Only after Hilda’s death in 1997 did her husband discover a trove of her poetry on scraps of paper written over 50 years ago. English translations are provided, but I found the all the paper distracting. To temper the dramatic angst, stories are interspersed with prayers and Hilda’s poetry set to live music, beautifully composed for the show by William Gilcher of the Goethe-Institut. I never thought German could sound so, well, poetic.

See it if: You wonder if religious faith really has the power to keep someone alive.

Skip it if: You think a Fringe show must be lewd, crude, skewed, or nude.